State: Teachers' suit targets bonuses

Correction (5/18/01): Curlew Creek Elementary School in Palm Harbor paid bonuses this year to staffers and former staffers who had transferred to other schools, not not to staffers on parental or medical leave.

Teacher Susan O'Gara was working at Maximo Elementary School when the school was awarded money as part of the state's recognition program. The next year, she transferred to Plumb Elementary, which also won money from the state.

Both schools decided to use their state money to give $800 bonuses to teachers for jobs well done. But by changing jobs, O'Gara became ineligible for a bonus from either school.

"I'm not concerned about the money personally, but what it's doing to all the teachers in all the schools," O'Gara said. "I felt somebody had to stand up and do something. I just feel like the Legislature should really ask the teachers."

With the help and support of the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association, O'Gara and other teachers this week filed a lawsuit against the state and Education Commissioner Charlie Crist. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the school-recognition program, saying that the state failed to write rules to ensure that the money would be divided in a fair way.

Without written guidelines, the lawsuit says, "the funds are being distributed to faculty and staff in an ad hoc fashion that is arbitrary and capricious." The lawsuit was filed in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court on behalf of six Pinellas teachers and "all others similarly situated."

Since the system of giving letter grades to schools started several years ago, the teachers union has been a vocal critic and filed several legal complaints. Although the union has not succeeded in having the system declared unconstitutional, local union leaders promise more legal action.

Every year, the state doles out cash to schools that earn A's or improve one or more letter grade. The schools can use the money however they deem best -- for bonuses or materials or big-ticket items, such as computers and playground equipment.

Local union leaders say evidence abounds that the system is broken.

Take O'Gara, for example. The reason she missed out on money at Maximo was that the school decided to give money earned in 1999-2000 to teachers at the school in 2000-2001. In 2000-2001, she was at Plumb.

And she didn't get the money from Plumb because the school decided to reward teachers who had been at the school in 1999-2000, the year the school earned the money.

Likewise, Dawn McCoy missed out. She was a teacher at Curlew Creek Elementary in 1999-2000, but the bonus money was not delivered to the school until 2000-2001. By then, McCoy was on maternity leave.

But the school decided to give money only to those teachers still at the school in 2000-2001, so McCoy didn't get any. The other plaintiffs cited in the lawsuit also didn't get money because they transferred schools.

Jade Moore, executive director of the Pinellas union, thinks all bonuses should be handled through collective bargaining with district negotiators. But the law does not allow the union to get involved and gives sole discretion over the money to individual schools.

"Because there are no rules, these named plaintiffs were treated differently based solely on the schools they were in," Moore said. "If you want to reward and recognize people for doing good stuff, you let bargaining create that process. That's an appropriate way to do it."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk